


No-Look Drop Pass

by SoniaVice



Category: Hockey RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-02-19 22:04:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2404496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoniaVice/pseuds/SoniaVice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few more bits of Teemu Selanne's book have been translated.  Paul's not happy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No-Look Drop Pass

**Author's Note:**

> In this world, Sirpa dated some hockey player a couple of times, but she had other things to do. These days she's busy being the Prime Minister of Finland.
> 
> Other than that, remarkably little is different.
> 
> (Story formatting has been updated. This should look better in downloaded versions than the original version.)

**Hockeyland, a blog by Phil MacIsaac**

Yesterday I caught up with a testy Paul Kariya, and I asked him about the latest morsel from Teemu Selanne's book that's making waves in hockeyland.

Testy is not usually a word you associate with Kariya, but it seems I wasn't the first guy to get him on the phone and ask about the things Selanne had to say about him.

You'll remember that Selanne made the headlines, just as the Ducks' camp was opening this year, with his comments about former coach Bruce Boudreau and captain Ryan Getzlaf. Most people were shocked at how blunt those remarks were. 

What he has to say about Kariya on the other hand...

> When we played it was almost peaceful. I know people don't think about hockey as a peaceful sport, but when you know the person you're with, like they're the other half of you, there's so much trust there—so much love. I always felt whole when we were together, like anything was possible.

And then later he has this to say about the end of Kariya's career:

> It was horrible for me, like a light went out. And I never said that to anyone, because for him, I'm sure it was much worse, but I believed we would play forever. You know, you tell yourself that. I loved the game, passionately, but after he was gone, it was never as beautiful for me.
> 
> It was okay when he went to Nashville or St. Louis, I was okay because I knew he was still on the ice, just not with me anymore.

And finally this intriguing remark about reports that Selanne was trying to get the Ducks to sign Kariya before he retired:

> Hockey is full of rumours and stories. The one about Paul, about trying to get him to the Ducks, that one made me laugh. He wasn't speaking to me anymore, so I'm not sure how that would have worked, maybe we could have got a linemate to carry messages?

Selanne has never been shy about extolling the virtues of Kariya, so all that light going out stuff isn't too surprising but I wanted to ask Kariya about Selanne's claims of a rift. What I got was the kind of epic sigh of frustration I usually only hear when I get my kids on the phone. Then he said this:

> I don't know what he's talking about, not that that's new. I was never not speaking to him. No one is ever speaking to him, you can't get a word in edgewise. Maybe something got lost in the translation or something.

So I asked him if he would have played with the Ducks if he'd been able:

> I don't think about my life like that—what I could have done. So, I don't know. It was never on the table. Would I have? I don't know, I'd moved on. I don't think going back would have been good for me.

Maybe Kariya's right and the unofficial translation is making this sound... how this sounds. All I know is that it looks like one of the most storied partnerships in hockey ended in a bitter divorce. Guess we'll have to wait for the official English version to know for sure.

 

 

"Here you go," Paul said and smiled at the grinning kid who'd asked for an autograph. He wouldn't have even been born the last time Paul had played a game. 

Paul was surrounded. He'd wedged his carry-on between his feet and just kept signing his name, smiling and nodding at the people, keeping his irritation in check. Maybe he should have realized he'd be this recognizable in the Helsinki airport. He could have skulked into the country via Sweden or something clever like that.

He hadn't done much clever lately, getting snippy with reporters, avoiding everyone's calls, getting on a plane. Giving in to the provocation lobbed at him by fucking Teemu and his fucking book. He'd flown to Helsinki high on his free-floating rage—a whim, if anything borne of so much hot blood could be called that. 

He didn't want his life all over the internet, and Teemu needed to make sure the English translation of his book didn't make everyone think nasty breakup and Paul Kariya belonged in the same sentence. If he had to come to Finland to get that, so be it. Teemu was going to stand still and shut up long enough for Paul to tell him just how much he needed to fix this.

He didn't see the photographers until the flash went off, too far away to feel like an ice pick in the eye, but close enough to unleash the anger burning in his gut. He ruthlessly used the crowd as a shield and ran for a taxi. 

In the movies, people are always home when you come to chew them out. Teemu hadn't gotten the memo. Paul leaned against the front door of his house and wondered how long he could hang around in a neighbourhood like this before someone called the cops. He could just google the nearest golf course, try there.

He was trying to make the internet tell him how to call a cab in Helsinki, in case the press made the logical deduction and showed up at Teemu's empty house too, when a vintage silver Porsche zipped into the driveway and stopped an inch short of too far. 

Teemu climbed out, smiled at Paul like it was 2004 and hauled a golf bag out of the back seat. Because, of course the big ego car had a tiny trunk.

"It's ridiculous, isn't it? I can't even fit the clubs in the trunk, but I love that fucking car," Teemu said and beamed at him, like Paul being here was just the best thing. "Come—we have about 2 minutes to get in the house before there's even more pictures of you on the internet."

Paul followed Teemu into the house, dodged the golf bag when Teemu dumped it in the hallway and set his carry-on in a corner. He wasn't staying, he was going to say his piece and get the hell out of here.

Teemu wasn't staying either, he'd disappeared down the hall, but Paul could still hear him talking. 

Paul followed the sound of his voice to the kitchen, where he was hauling things out of the refrigerator and talking to himself in Finnish. Paul sat on a stool and watched. When Teemu could bother to pay him some attention, they'd get to it. 

He'd been too much of a rageball to eat on the plane, so he was starving. Teemu was digging into a bowl of something that smelled like fish and looked like- "What is that?" 

"Leftovers," Teemu said and laid on another big, happy smile. It made Paul a little queasy. His throat was dry from the plane or he'd have started explaining how this was not a social call.

Teemu filled a glass with water and set in front of Paul.

The weird fishy something went in the microwave, which was now going to smell like fish forever. No wonder Teemu still lived alone. Not that Paul had any idea if that was even true. He looked around, alarmed, searching for any signs of someone else in the house. 

It didn't matter, he just needed to get Teemu to shut up—he was going on about his golf game, slipping into Finnish about half the time while Paul ignored him. He was going to say what he wanted to say, get a cab and find something to eat, because the fishy stuff was starting to smell good, which meant he really was starving.

Teemu set a plate in front of Paul. Paul cautiously tipped up the top layer of crusty bread and saw lettuce and tomato and avocado. This was not a friendly visit, dammit. They were not hanging out. 

The bread looked fresh, though, so he took a bite. The avocado wasn't quite ripe, but there was just the right amount of mayo and Teemu had salted the tomato the way he liked.

"Not as good as California, but almost, yes?" Teemu said.

Paul opened his mouth to explain that avocados weren't what he was here to talk about when Teemu walked around behind him and squeezed his shoulder before running his hand along his back and no, just, no, there was not going to be any touching here.

"Still in such good shape," Teemu said, like that groping had been a fitness checkup. "I'm jealous. Getting old sucks."

Paul turned his back and finished his sandwich. He was fading fast, jet lag not something he got the joy of too often anymore. He was going to get this over with, get a cab, and—Teemu had disappeared, leaving the dregs of his fishy something to quietly stink on the counter beside Paul's empty plate.

"Your bag's upstairs," Teemu said and Paul whirled around to glare at him, and now they were going to get down to it. Finally. He opened his mouth, and Teemu smiled at him, something soft and hesitant, the brilliant, vibrant man who never stopped laughing when he wasn't talking nowhere in evidence. "Go sleep," he said.

Paul found the hotel-like guest room, his bag waiting for him on a chair. He crashed. When he woke up he would have it out with Teemu. If he was really lucky, the photographers would have given up, and he'd be able to leave without anyone seeing him. 

When he did wake up, at what the clocks in the house claimed was almost noon, there was no Teemu, no golf bag and no silver Porsche. There was a basket of avocados in the kitchen with a note sticking up that said, "Golf!"

He made a sandwich and carried it into the next room, a small space furnished with a leather sofa, a giant TV and floor to ceiling windows that looked out onto the back yard. It looked like summer out, bright sunshine and blue skies. He could hear birds in the trees that lined the patch of immaculate grass.

He ignored the television in favour of the book he'd bought for the flight, an airport thriller that had a lot of fraught scenes of confrontation that never got interrupted by golf games or jet lag.

His sandwich wasn't as good as Teemu's, even though the avocado was perfectly ripe. 

The sun was low in the sky when he woke up. Teemu was sitting on the coffee table reading Paul's book, sunlight striping his body. "This is terrible," he said. How he thought he any right to literary criticism, Paul didn't know. 

His head was okay, neck a bit stiff, but that was blamable on sleeping on the sofa. His jet lag induced fog of fatigue and irritability had gone, so he called it good enough and sat up.

Teemu needed a haircut. He didn't look up. He turned a page in the book, raised his eyebrows at something on the page. "I always wanted to show you Helsinki, you know."

"You never asked me." Paul heard the petulance in his voice and sighed at himself.

"You would have said no." 

Paul wanted to argue, he'd made rugged contrariness his default response to Teemu off the ice, had used his truculence to keep Teemu away, keep himself safe. It had succeeded, barring a few ceremonies and interviews he couldn't duck, and it was habit still. But he had no argument here, he would have said no. "Why did you write those things?" he said.

"We're not talking Boudreau, are we?"

Paul glared at him until he stopped reading. He looked up and ran a hand through his hair, making it flop in his eyes worse than it had before. He shrugged, nothing apologetic. "It was all true."

"How is that the point?"

"It's the only point," Teemu said and smiled his smile that he thought looked enigmatic but was really just smug. He'd worn that look whenever they'd—well, whenever they'd scored a goal, too. Later, on the bench when the on-ice celebration was over, he'd crash into Paul and look so pleased with himself that Paul would grin back at him, helpless to resist.

Concussions were a lesson in bearing up under helplessness. Despair was an exercise in learning how to resist all sorts of things. Paul was a new man. 

The house was quiet and the sun had crawled across the floor and climbed the wall. Teemu had moved to the other end of the sofa, tucked up with his feet on the cushions and his back to the window, still reading the book. 

"Was I asleep again?" 

"Don't think so. Unless you sleep with your eyes open and a big frown on your face. I wouldn't know these days."

Paul smiled at him even though Teemu wasn't looking, because he wasn't looking. "Thinking," Paul said.

"Hmmm," Teemu answered and turned the page. "We need to go out for dinner, I don't have any food in the house except avocados."

"I noticed." The house didn't even look lived in, with barely any sign of Teemu's habitation, much less anyone else. 

"I spent the summer in California. I came back for the book—interviews, you know." Teemu waved his hand in the air, the universal gesture for 'all that crap'.

"Why did you write that book?"

"They paid me."

"I have money, I could have beat their offer."

Teemu looked at him and quirked his lips. "Tempting, but too late." He tossed Paul's book onto the floor and said, "Bucket list."

"Huh?"

"I wrote it down, all the things I said I'd do when I retired."

"And write a book was on there?"

Teemu shook his head and said, "Telling the truth." He moved, going up on his knees and Paul thought he was going to make a move, try to, to—he stepped off the sofa and stretched. "Food, come on, we'll make Deadspin's day."

Surely Finland had take out?

Paul went upstairs to do something with his hair, if they were going to light up the internet, one of them needed to look good. Teemu made him wear a borrowed tie and a jacket that fit well enough. 

The restaurant was almost tiny, less than 10 tables, but the food was beautiful and delicious, like a family dinner if your family included a really good chef. Paul made his one glass of wine last. 

The waiter spoke English without prompting, calling him Mr. Kariya. No one stared or snapped any pictures, but it was no place for private conversation, so Paul let Teemu tell him about that day's golf game. 

The anger had bled out of him like adrenaline after a game, and he didn't know what to do with the empty spaces that were left.

"I would have said no," Paul said. To Helsinki, to the Ducks, to ever going backwards. 

Teemu nodded and signalled the waiter for the bill. "I know."

The internet got pictures of them outside the restaurant—Paul looking at the car as if he'd never seen such a thing, Paul getting in the car, and trying to present them with the back of his head, Teemu grinning when he gunned the engine.

He followed Teemu inside the house again. This time, Teemu stood and fiddled with his keys just inside the door. Paul pulled the tie off, not bothering to be careful with the silk, and shrugged out of his borrowed jacket. He was tempted to toss them on the floor, see what Teemu would say, imagining the outrage, undeservedly righteous.

"Do you want me to drive you to the airport?" Teem said, and Paul let the tie flutter to the floor unheeded.

"No?" he said, the rising note of fear that Teemu _wanted_ him to leave unfiltered.

Teemu looked at him and made the expansive and frustrated gesture he'd used years ago to claim he'd run out of English. 

"Would have said no," Paul said, enunciating like he believed the words were the problem, that what he'd said had been unclear, not what he hadn't. "Then," he added.

Teemu grabbed the jacket out of his hand and tossed it to the floor, so Paul was laughing when Teemu kissed him.

Teemu's bedroom looked as it should, more clothes on the floor than what they'd just tossed there, a messy stack of books on by the bed, a phone charger dangling from the mirror, three ties puddled below, all of it painfully familiar.

Then, back then, it had been frantic and desperate, stained with shame and secrecy. He remembered exactly how many nights they'd spent together. How few. It had kept him alive, until it was killing him.

Don't look back. 

Then, in the here and now, it wasn't like that at all. 

He wanted to just stand there and let Teemu kiss him forever. The windows acted like a mirror, showing him an indistinct blur of bodies and motion. Slow motion. Teemu kissed him until his lips were hot with blood and his body a languid thing that didn't know how to stand anymore. 

"We should," Teemu said and pressed forward with his thigh, moving Paul back a step and then another. The press of Teemu's body slackened, and Paul dropped to sit on the bed. The position gave him a good view, so he looked and then he met Teemu's eye, raised a brow, made him laugh. 

Teemu just watched him, waiting. He fell back onto the bed, so Teemu chased him down. 

Teemu had a blooming bruise of black and blue and yellow on his back, the imprint of a stick butt a sharp rectangle in the centre. Paul rolled him over to see it better, touched the skin with his fingers, his lips. Traced the colours. "You've been playing."

"Just fooling around," Teemu said. 

"Hmmm," Paul said. He wanted to see all of Teemu, made new by time, learn his taste and the shape of him, find the places that he liked touched, where Paul's teeth made the best marks. 

Teemu settled on his belly, head on his arms, cat after the cream smile on his face. Paul took the measure of him until Teemu couldn't stay still. He flipped Paul over and laughed. At the look on Paul's face he supposed. He stretched until his shoulder cracked and let his arms drop over his head, limp, an invitation, intentionally obvious.

Teemu rolled off to the side and ran his hand from Paul's belly down, pausing to scratch at the curls of hair, then deftly circled his cock. Paul arched up and groaned. Teemu pushed at Paul's shoulder, and he squirmed around so he could plant his feet on the bed. 

Teemu teased him, touched him, scratched at his belly, his thighs, nails blunt and fingers rough. He played with Paul's balls, finding the right amount of pressure to make Paul come up off the bed and moan. Teemu pressed his thumb on his perineum and Paul said, "Harder," and spread his legs, happily wanton. 

Teemu pressed his thumb lower, stirring up sparks of need that had Paul's balls tightening up. "You can come from this?" Teemu said and pressed his thumb in until Paul was barely breached, rocked into him gently.

Paul pulled his legs up until his hamstrings burned with the stretch. "Won't take much with you driving me crazy." Teemu chuckled contentedly, insufferable in his success at achieving the effect he had always sought. 

The lube was cold, and Teemu laughed at his gasp of pleasure at the feel of it. But there were things Teemu didn't know, moves he wouldn't know to make. "Two fingers, slow and steady," Paul said.

"You're going to come?" Teemu asked again, and Paul was lost to the feel of Teemu pushing inside him. He'd shifted around so Paul could hook one leg over Teemu's shoulder. He let the other splay open on the bed. 

He tried to talk, he had to explain, but all that came out was a groan, loud. His body was hot, singing with desire, the need for release flooding him, his brain, bruised and wounded now bathed in pleasure, drenched in it. 

"Fuck me," he managed to say and Teemu thrust in with his fingers. One, two, three times, and Paul fisted the sheets to keep his hands off, it was better, so much better if he didn't touch, but he had to finish what he'd been trying to say, "After. Want you to. Need after." 

"Yeah, come on," Teemu said, fucking into him harder now, pushing past the clench of Paul's orgasm. "Come on, that's it." Teemu's hand stilled while Paul was coming down and he shook his head, couldn't make words come out and he looked at Teemu, telling him _now, now, don't wait_.

He had both legs up on Teemu's shoulders when Teemu pushed into him, too slow, too slow, then finally hard enough, fast enough. He told himself it was the glass wall that made him sound so loud. 

He got half hard again and Teemu leaned in, making his legs ache from the stretch, his whole body writhing on just the right amount of too much. Too much of everything.

Teemu was the one getting loud, his fingers digging in to Paul's thighs and Paul pushed back, matching Teemu's speed, then leading him to move harder, faster. He came a second time, weak spurts of come, but the clench of his body around Teemu was enough to make him come apart, loud and inarticulate and collapsing.

Teemu sprawled on the bed, ungraceful and spent, shoved at Paul with a weak hand and smiled.

"Pleased with yourself?" Paul asked, voice a debauched rasp.

"Yes, absolutely. And with you." 

In the morning the wall of windows that had been impenetrable black mystery the night before were bright with morning light and showed the same ordinary backyard he'd seen the day before. 

Paul pulled a pillow over his head and considered the state of things. His head was complaining a bit—the wine, likely, and what came after, certainly—but his legs ached in the most delicious way, and he had a bruise here or there. He sank back into sleep sure the look on his face was smug.

"Up, up, up," Teemu carolled, and Paul grabbed for his pillow. Teemu was in golf clothes, shirt the colour of a California beach shack after a summer of sun, pants an unattractive beige.

"I'm not playing golf with you." Paul shrugged off the sheet, arched his back a little to get it to pool at his waist. 

"Very nice," Teemu said, "but you have to come. This guy who wants to sell me half a hockey team will be there."

Paul rolled up on his side, giving the front view a chance to obstruct Teemu's plans. "Half a hockey team?"

"Yes, it's a fabulous deal, we can go halves."

"Is this on your bucket list too?"

"Oh, I threw that out. I have a whole new list now." Teemu yanked the sheet all the way off and leered at the front view. "Now go shower, you lazy man, and come play with me." Teemu left him, doubtlessly assuming Paul would do as he bid.

Paul rolled up out of bed and stood naked in front of the windows. He stretched, watched the birds flocking in and out of the trees, wondered if the sunshine was lying to him about how warm the day was. 

Did he want to own half of half of a hockey team? There were worse things to do with your life, and he'd never made any lists. He thought about it, not in a hurry to start the day.

Paul Kariya played golf in Finland one day in October when the sun tried hard to make him believe it was still summer.

**Author's Note:**

> I make no proprietary claims on the hook for this story. If anyone wants to write their take on what mayhem Teemu's book may cause, please, please do.


End file.
